I know from my own career that many math teachers rightly take a cynical view when it comes to the commercialization of their classroom (real or virtual) content. The equivalent of what Edward Tufte calls "chart junk" sometimes threatens to take over with garish irrelevancies, obnoxious clutter, calling attention to fast foods and or fizzy drinks. Story problems may be among the worst offenders.
All that being said, there's a place for realism, even in a fictional setting. Portland is home to many a "food pod" as we call them, meaning organized spaces geared for food trucks to come in and out of. A "food truck" is more accurately described as a trailer in many cases, not designed to supply its own mobility. Other food trucks are indeed trucks, and in that case open on one or both sides to serve customers. The trailers tend to open in the back, providing a deeper kitchen.
The game we imagine, for the classroom, might use the names of actual food trucks, with permission, or at least closely mirror the usually multi-ethnic character of these food courts, which inherit from the World's Fair aesthetic. People came to expect yakisoba noodles in close proximity to hot dogs, pizza near Pandas Express -- one of the major chains, usually mall-anchored but food court versions might exist someday.
The game predictably focuses on workflows within each cart, as well as on crowd modeling, especially queuing theory. We might follow sim families, studying their expenditures. The Food Pod is a lot like a Theme Park (hello Disney), just turn some of the food pods into rides.
If you know your food cart culture, then you know the radio activated buzzer is commonplace. The customer places and order, pays up front, then gets a hand-held device with a blinking light. When the light blinks faster, and the device vibrates and or dings, that means it's time to retrieve one's order. In the meantime, one might've been having a beer at the bar (put a coaster over it, and bring your meal back). A similar practice is used for seating at Spaghetti Factory.
Internally to each food cart, we get the "short order cook" model. Oft times a cart will have two crewing, one taking orders and accepting money, the other multitasking on the backlog, with orders fulfilled not in first come first serve order, but in "whenever ready" mode. Some menu items take a lot longer to prepare. These facts of life are familiar to any restaurant owner, any chef, but for some students, playing Food Pod, with realistic commercial graphics, will be an eye-opener.
So is this more of that much-vaunted Supermarket Math you may have heard that I push? How much SQL is in this picture? Are the carts using crypto? Clearly we anticipate spiraling, with Fisher-Price level Food Pod at the low end, entry level, leading up to MIT Food Pod (thinking of MIT Scratch) at a pinnacle of sophistication. Linear programming will enter into it (mini-max and all that).
I'm saying "yes" to the Supermarket Math question but want to suggest we always mingle our four directions in this "future vs past vs reap vs sow" environment. That's "martian vs neolithic vs supermarket vs casino".
To sow is to take a gamble, but then not to sow is usually to take an even greater risk. To reap is to then face distribution and allocation issues, which is where all the supermarket stuff comes in, transportation most especially, from field to table to sanitation facility -- garbage pickup is part of any FoodVille.
The supermarket-casino anchors an ever-present, whereas the martian-neolithic axis suggests a trajectory, the and freedom to rewire the ever-present circuits. Invest in AC generators, and enjoy a surplus of kilowatt hours. This presumes harnessing the Columbia. Our Food Pod will posit hydropower generation in the background. We're always free to simulate natural gas and or coal, even geothermal, in our various versions. We're looking to OSU for the virtual mini-nuke plants. Around here, with existing options, they might not be that economical.
You might be think this all sounds fine and good but what about matters of diet? When do we talk about health? Obviously, there's a seamless link between recipes used inside the carts, and the food available to students, although likely requiring preparation. By performing a systems analysis of parallel workflows, the students develop an appetite and move on to food prep as a next pre-lunch activity. Student teams learn to prep for larger groups. Others clean. Roles rotate. Sounds Quaker.
